A Message from Suzanne Bader, VP of Programs

ASTD-Cascadia Chapter Monthly Programs is one of ASTD’s programs initiatives and along with the Annual Conference, Series and Learning Leaders Forums, brings a wide variety of topic areas to Portland’s learning and development community. Sessions are targeted at existing and potential learning and development professionals, human resources staff, and anyone else interested in the workplace learning field.

While we call them “Monthly Programs”, they are not quite monthly. In order to make wise programming decisions, we account for things like holidays, summer months and the Annual Conference and plan for 7-9 programs per year. The goal is to maximize the learning and experience of our members and hence every monthly program meets one or more of the national ASTD competencies. Events are planned to be interactive and not exclusively lecture.

2010 has been a phenomenal year for Monthly Programs! With a strong planning team, high quality speakers and great attendance by our members – YOU - Monthly Programs has significantly contributed to the financial well-being of the Cascadia chapter. This in return allows first class programming in the future. Feedback from members has been very positive and one member said that, “ASTD has done a terrific job improving the topics and quality of monthly meetings this year.”

Now we are headed into the last quarter of 2010 but we are not slowing down! The October Monthly Program is a partnership with the ASTD Cascadia conference team and is referred to as the Pre-conference. It takes place on Tuesday, October 19th, 2010 from 10am-4pm, in Salem, OR, the day before the conference. This is a great opportunity to get 3 days of learning and experience in one location – the Salem Conference Center. The topic of the October Pre-conference is “Accelerated Learning through Simulations” and the speaker is Joel Reed and Shannon Smith from BTS, the global leader in accelerating strategic alignment and execution through the use of experiential learning.

“The Art and Discipline of Technical Training” with Bettina Davis, author of Demystifying Technical Training, will be offered on Thursday, September 23rd, 2010 from 1 - 4 pm. We’ll end the year with “Building Training Based Webinars into Blended Learning” with Roger Courville, co-founder and principal of the 1080 Group, on Thursday, December 9th, 2010 from 9am-noon.

Now you may be saying “stop, enough is enough”!!! Well, no, it is not!!! We kick-off 2011 with our most well known speaker yet!!! It will be a once in a lifetime experience to learn about one of the best known concepts in the learning field from the person who developed it! To learn the individual’s name though, you’ll have to attend the Annual Conference in October. We’ll be holding drawings for free registration and an opportunity to dine with a small group of individuals and the speaker prior to the event. A program discount will also be available if you sign up during the conference. Mark January 27th, 2011, 9am-noon on your calendar!!!

Suzanne Bader
VP of Programs
ASTD-Cascadia Chapter
programs@astdcascadia.org

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